What's the task? Please describe.

Action items for releasing v<1.6.3>

Roles

• Release captain: @derekbit
• QA captain: @chriscchien @roger-ryao

Describe the sub-tasks.

Pre-Release

The Release Captain needs to finish the following items.

• Before creating RC1, create a new release branch for the following component repositories, and then create RC1 from the new branch. Leave the master branch for the next feature release development (This task is only needed when doing a feature release such as 1.7.0).
  • longhorn-manager
  • longhorn-ui
  • longhorn-tests
  • longhorn-engine
  • longhorn-instance-manager
  • longhorn-share-manager
  • backing-image-manager
  • longhorn-spdk-engine (needed after GA)
  • cli
• Trigger the GA release build by longhorn/longhorn Actions

The QA captain needs to coordinate the following items before the GA release.

• Regression test plan (manual)
• Run e2e regression for pre-GA milestones (install, upgrade) @yangchiu
• Run security testing of container images for pre-GA milestones @yangchiu
• Verify longhorn chart PR to ensure all artifacts are ready for GA (install, upgrade)
• Run core testing (install, upgrade) for the GA build
  • Upgrade from the previous patch of the same feature release.
  • Upgrade from the last patch of the previous feature release.

Release

The Release Captain needs to finish the following items.

• Release note - Release Captain
  • Deprecation note
  • Upgrade notes including highlighted notes, deprecation, compatible changes, and others impacting the current users
• Publish the new version of doc and add a next patch version of dev doc.
• Release longhorn/chart from the release branch to publish to ArtifactHub by longhorn/charts Actions
• Marked the release as latest release in longhorn/longhorn README.md
• Marked the release as stable release
  • For the first stable release, we need to consider several factors and reach a consensus by maintainers before claiming it stable.
  • For any patch release after a stable release, we need to wait 1-2 weeks for user feedback.

Post-Release

After marking the release as a stable release, Release Captain needs to coordinate the following items

• Update https://github.com/longhorn/longhorn/blob/master/deploy/upgrade_responder_server/chart-values.yaml - @PhanLe1010
• Add another request for the rancher charts for the next patch release - @rebeccazzzz

Rancher Charts

The Release Captain needs to coordinate the following items.

• Verify the chart can be installed & upgraded - QA captain
• rancher/image-mirrors update - @mantissahz @PhanLe1010
• rancher/charts active branches for Rancher App Marketplace - @mantissahz @PhanLe1010

cc @longhorn/qa @longhorn/dev